Fenway 1912 (18 page)

So was the second. Tris Speaker smacked a pitch over Daniels's head into the crowd in center field for another two-base hit, knocking in Yerkes. On another day Speaker's hit might have rolled to the bleachers for a home run, even without the crowd, but the soft outfield ground, which in places collected footprints, may well have slowed it down and held Speaker to a triple. He pulled into second, and the crowd watched as the numeral "1" slipped into the slot beneath the "3" that represented New York's three first-inning runs. Boston was on the board.

Speaker was stranded, and a game that started sloppy continued that way as it soon became clear that neither club, nor the field itself, was in anything close to midseason form. Together the two teams would combine for ten errors and several other miscues. Ground balls collected mud and either stopped short or careened away, while drives that found the ground barely bounced at all, and fielders who pulled up short or had to cut quickly discovered the ground giving out beneath them. Steve Yerkes had a particularly tough time, collecting three errors for the day. Jake Stahl didn't help matters much by dropping nearly every chance he had that didn't arrive chest high, leading Fenway fans to jeer the man they had expected to welcome back with cheers. O'Brien gave up two more runs in the third, and when Boston loaded the bases in the fourth and the pitcher was due to bat, the manager decided he had seen enough. Stahl pinch-hit Olaf Henriksen for O'Brien and sent Charley Hall down the line to warm up. Henriksen walked to score a run, Hooper knocked in another with a force-out, and then Yerkes collected another hit to make the score 5–4.

It was a close game, and with Charley Hall on the mound it stayed that way. The burly Mexican American did what O'Brien could not, which was recognize the strike zone. He kept New York off the board, helping his own cause by leading off the sixth with a walk and coming around to score and tie the game. But in the eighth Hall threw away a pickoff attempt at second base, and when Hal Chase knocked the runner in from third the Yankees went up 6–5.

But Steve Yerkes was having the game of his life, at least at the plate, where his four hits thus far more or less offset his three errors. He led off the eighth belting another double and tied the game when Jake Stahl collected his first hit with a long drive to center, a certain home run if not for the crowd.

The game entered extra innings, and in the eleventh New York loaded the bases but did not score. The contest was already three hours old when Hall stepped in to lead off the Boston eleventh, and it was becoming hard to see. He struck out, and when Harry Hooper hit a foul pop-up for the second out it seemed likely that, unless the Sox scored, the game would soon be called. The first game at Fenway Park seemed destined to end in a tie.

But Yerkes was not finished. In his seventh at-bat of the game he rolled a slow one to third base. Cozy Dolan took the ball on the run and was still running when he threw the ball to first. So was Yerkes, and as the ball sailed over his head so was first baseman Hal Chase, who raced after the errant toss as Yerkes ran to second. Catcher Gabby Street then gave up a passed ball, sending Yerkes to third and bringing up Tris Speaker.

Fenway Park was still full, and everyone was on their feet screaming as Speaker stepped in against pitcher Hippo Vaughn. There was no other hitter in the lineup Sox fans and Speaker's teammates would have preferred to see at the plate.

It was at times like this that Speaker set himself apart from other players. Pressure situations did not bother him. In fact, he usually felt most comfortable when it was late in the game with runners on base. After all, the pitcher had to come to him or else risk putting him on with a base on balls, and then watch him dance down the line. Vaughn worked carefully, and Speaker ran the count full, growing more confident with each pitch. Then he sliced a scorcher toward third and took off.

Yerkes broke with the pitch, and though Dolan managed to block the ball, which skidded along the ground, he failed to field it cleanly.

That was all Speaker, one of the fastest runners in the game, needed. Once an infielder bobbled a ball hit by Speaker there was little chance he would be thrown out at first. Dolan fired the ball toward Chase, but as the first baseman reached for it Speaker was already crossing the bag, his legs a blur and a laugh ready to form on his lips. He turned in time to see Yerkes cross the plate and leap into the arms of his teammates in front of the dugout as fans tossed torn newspapers and other impromptu confetti into the air. As some cut across the field to the exits, the scoreboard in left field told the story: Boston 7, New York 6. It was the first of hundreds of games between the two clubs that would be waged on Fenway's diamond over the next hundred years.

The park cleared, and McAleer, McRoy, and Taylor breathed a sigh of relief. That had been their last concern. McLaughlin had been confident that his ramp system would allow Fenway Park to empty quickly, but since so few fans had attended the exhibition with Harvard, there had been no way to test the arrangement before the game. But after only five minutes the grandstand was virtually empty, and only a few stragglers remained in the park, most loitering on the field, to the consternation of Jerome Kelley. No one had stumbled down the ramps and been trampled, and no one had been crushed, but they were making a mess of the infield.

With a record of 5-1, the victory left the Red Sox in first place, one game ahead of Philadelphia. With no game the following day because of local blue laws—April 21 was a Sunday—the Sox looked next to a four-game series with McAleer's old club, the Washington Nationals, due in on Monday.

That provided just enough time for the rain to return. On Monday, April 22, McAleer waited as long as possible before calling the game off, ordering the center-field flag to be lowered at 2:45 p.m., just as larger groups of fans were beginning to show up and the players were warming up on the field, gingerly stepping over puddles. It was already the fifth rainout of the young season, and both McAleer and Stahl were becoming a bit concerned. McAleer fretted over the loss of lucrative dates, and Stahl worried not only that the Red Sox would lose their edge but that the doubleheader makeup games later in the season would wreak havoc on his pitching staff. And if he had a real concern so far it was his pitching staff. Hageman had been horrible, and O'Brien was not much better. Despite their 5-1 record, only Hall and Wood had pitched according to form.

That kind of assurance ended the next day. The rain stopped, but it was, as one newspaperman described it, "like a bleak cold day in November." The two clubs combined for nine errors on the bitterly cold day as Washington roughed up Wood for six runs and beat the Sox, 6–2. Wood had a hard time finding the plate and walked seven men, including the leadoff hitter in four separate innings. Casey Hageman had hardly looked that bad. As Paul Shannon observed, "When Joe is right he is well nigh invincible, but when Joe has a bad day no rookie in the majors has anything on him for wobbling, and Joe wobbled yesterday, early and often."

Walter Johnson—already considered the best pitcher in the league at age twenty-five, and heir to the title of the game's greatest pitcher now that Christy Mathewson was beginning to show his age—took the mound for Washington the next day. The contrast was undeniable—he was everything Joe Wood was not. A tall, lanky sidearmer, the mild-mannered Johnson threw harder than any man in baseball, with the possible exception of Wood. But Johnson had far better control and made his fastball even faster by mixing in a sweeping curve that froze right-handed hitters and a deceptive "slow ball," or changeup. On his start to perhaps the greatest season of his career, Johnson toyed with the Red Sox on his way to an easy 5–2 win, a defeat made even worse by the loss of Jake Stahl. During warm-ups before the game he slipped on the dugout steps while retrieving an errant throw and badly sprained his ankle. Hugh Bradley took over at first base.

The defeat concerned Stahl more than the pain in his ankle. While Washington was obviously an improved club, and Johnson was always a challenge, the "Senators," as some called them, were not one of the league's elite teams. Although the Red Sox club still had a winning record, they were not playing inspired baseball. Even the sportswriters noticed. Boston games were taking forever to play. The players, as if their blood had been thickened by the unceasing cold and rain, seemed barely able to drag themselves onto the field. Paul Shannon had observed that the Senators were playing as if something was at stake while the Red Sox played "as though they were so slowed by the cold that they had lost all ambition."

The one exception was moon-faced Duffy Lewis, a player who always seemed to have a half-smile on his face. He was hitting more than .300 and playing inspired defense. Born George Lewis in San Francisco on April 18, 1888, he shared a birthday, April 18, with the great San Francisco earthquake, which in 1906 he had survived. One of John I. Taylor's western discoveries, Lewis joined the Red Sox in 1910 after playing one year of college ball for St. Mary's, then spending one year in the California League and another in the Pacific Coast League before becoming a member of a Boston team that sportswriters of the day called "the Speedboys" in deference to their style of play.

Lewis didn't fit in, either by style or by temperament. Only twenty-one years old, the PCL graduate didn't defer to the club's veterans, who resented him for taking an outfield spot from veteran Harry Niles and not treating his elders with sufficient respect during batting practice or in the clubhouse. He and Tris Speaker, who ran in separate circles on the club, never saw eye to eye, a fact that Lewis was surprisingly blunt about in his later years. He once said, "It's simply that we weren't intimate. I spent most of my leisure time with one group of mates. He went around with another group ... I was friendliest with Bill Carrigan and Heinie Wagner and the other card players on the club. Each group went its own separate way." Lewis liked his drink and was a bit of a rake—the girls who didn't swoon over Joe Wood got giddy over Lewis. Every few months it seemed there was a report in the Boston newspapers that he was engaged to yet another young woman.

Compared to many of his teammates, Lewis also played a different style of ball. For one, he couldn't run—at least not enough to steal more than a dozen or so bases a season, which made him a relative tortoise on a team of hares. And unlike most players of the era, who were place hitters who went with the pitch, Lewis was, as he referred to himself, a "chronic pull hitter." Opposing infielders even shifted dramatically when he came to bat, a rarity in the era.

His one outstanding talent was his ability to track and catch fly balls, a skill he had learned as a youngster when he served as mascot for the Alamedas of the California League and shagged flies for hours as the team practiced. Lewis was not fast, but he got a good jump on the ball and rarely took a bad route. And while his arm was only average, it was accurate and he got rid of the ball quickly.

Joining an outfield that already included Tris Speaker in center and Harry Hooper in right, both of whom could run and throw, created the perfect situation for Lewis. Speaker ranged far and wide in center, giving Lewis somewhat less territory to cover than if he had been paired with another center fielder. And since opponents rarely took their chances with the arms of Hooper and Speaker, they ran on Lewis instead—but more often than not found out that the arm that looked weak when compared to his companions was not so weak after all.

Moving from the Huntington Avenue Grounds to Fenway Park was a boon for Lewis. Left field was enormous at Huntington Avenue—350 feet down the line before angling back sharply to 440 feet in left-center. There Lewis had been forced to play deep. If a ball got over his head, it was an almost certain home run.

In Fenway Park, however, Lewis felt as if he'd been set free. After playing only a few games, he realized that, with the embankment and the left-field wall behind him, any ball hit over his head wasn't going to go very far. He was the first to recognize, as Sox left fielder Carl Yastrzemski later noted, that "what we're playing out there is deep shortstop." The fence and embankment allowed Lewis to play much closer to the infield, a placement that not only helped his arm but helped out Boston pitchers. The number of his putouts would increase dramatically, from 203 in 1911 to 301 in 1912, as he caught flares over the infield that in previous years would have fallen for hits. This change in Lewis's play particularly helped a pitcher like Joe Wood, whose fastball tended to jam hitters, not unlike Yankee reliever Mariano Rivera today. When batters did make contact off Wood, they often fisted weak fly balls that barely made it to the outfield. Such drives that had fallen in for hits in the past were now outs.

On April 25, in the series finale against Washington, Lewis gave dramatic evidence of just how big an impact Fenway Park's left-field wall would have, not only on himself but on the Red Sox. Despite the fact that President William Howard Taft was in Boston to deliver a speech, the most memorable phrase stemming from the events of that day would be inspired not by world affairs but by Duffy Lewis.

With Charley Hall on the mound and two outs in the first inning, speedy outfielder Clyde Milan hit the ball to left-center, splitting the outfielders. In the Huntington Avenue Grounds such a hit would have been an automatic double for a hitter like Milan.

But Lewis was playing thirty or forty feet shallower than in the past. He raced after the ball, cut it off, then spun and threw like countless Red Sox left fielders have done since after playing a ball off the wall. Milan's hit didn't make it that far, but Lewis's approach was the same. His throw beat a shocked Milan to second, and the inning was over.

Lewis made two nice running catches in the fourth and another in the seventh as Boston built a 4–1 lead. At the Huntington Avenue Grounds one or both of those balls would have dropped for a hit. Then, in the eighth, with two out, catcher John Henry of Washington drove the ball deep to left. Lewis turned and ran once more, and the long fly hung in the air, giving him a chance to catch up to the ball. Running hard, Lewis was just beginning to slow and reach for the hit when he suddenly discovered the ground coming up to meet him.